Human remains: processes of “objectification” and “subjectification”, in the San Vicente cemetery

Abstract

In this work, I present a particular aspect of the research that I carried out in the San Vicente Cemetery (Córdoba) during the years 2018-2020: the analysis of the porosity between the “proper” and “improper” treatments of the human remains, there. From a specific event, the complaint that the necropolis received in 2016 for the commercial deal in which some remains are involved, the article ethnographically addresses the meanings and representations that are created around them, from the perspective of the employees of the necropolis. What is considered as “proper” and “improper” treatment of human remains acquires different meanings for the different groups that handle them. This is how, in the first place, I start from the testimonies of the employees to delve into their daily work and understand the forms that the complex matter with which they work acquires, stopping at the reasons for their affirmations that the cemetery is a no man’s land , a cemetery for the poor. Later, I make the analysis more complex, reflecting on a publication of a Facebook group of medical students, where other “proper” and “improper” treatment of bodies are unmarked. Thus, the irregularities reported in the necropolis appear as an emergent situation, which reveals a more complex scenario of conceptions, relationships and contexts, following an uninterrupted line that leads from the reduced circle of cemetery employees to the scope of society as a whole and its values. hegemonic.

In this context, I investigate the reasons for the statement that the San Vicente Cemetery is considered a no man's land, a Cemetery for the poor. The fact that the existence of certain irregularities is reliably known is revealing of the representation that the State and society make of these sectors and of the behavior that they consequently adopt in relation to them.

Cemetery; Humans remains; Objectification; Death; Society